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AUGUBIES 



II 



AUGUEIES 



BY 

LAURENCE BINYON 



NEW YORK 

JOHN LANE COMPANY 

MCMXIV 



J 



'?J?feoo3 



Printed in England 



i 1914 



TO 



ROBERT BRIDGES 



CONTENTS 



A PRELUDE AT EVENING 


1 


MALHAM COVE 


4 


ELEGY 


26 


THE MIRROR 


29 


TO TIME 


44 


THE TIGER-LILY 


46 


THE BOWL OF WATER 


53 


FERRY HINKSEY 


55 


IN THE FOREST 


56 


THE FOREST PINE 


58 


FIDE ET LITERIS 


62 


PAST AND FUTURE 


63 


THUNDER ON THE DOWNS 


64 


THE TRAM 


73 


TOWERS OF ITALY 


83 


VIGIL 


85 


THE PORCH OF STARS 


87 


THE PROMISE 


88 


A MOTHER'S SONG 


89 


ONE YEAR OLD 


91 


BECAUSE THOU ART NEAREST 


94 


SEVEN YEARS 


95 


SORROW 


96 


E. H. P. : IN MEMORY 


97 



A PRELUDE AT EVENING 

My spirit was like the lonely air 

Before night. 
Like hovering cloud that 's melted there 

In the late light. 
When slow the vast earth-shadows reach 

To the last flush. 
And the wandering Silences have each 

Their own hush. 

Did the green grass about me glimmer, 

Or trees tower ? 
Not softer to my sense, nor dimmer. 

The obscure power 
Of all the world's wide trouble, fought 

In the heart's recess : 
My heart was solitude, my thought 

Emptiness. 

1 A 



AUGURIES 

But through my spirit that seemed, unfilled, 

Alone to float, 
A sudden dewy sweetness thrilled ; 

A low note ! 
And then a loud note, rippling full 

To a still pause : 
The liquid silence was a pool 

That a breeze flaws. 

It throbbed again, how lonely clear ! 

A song that seemed 
Sprung beyond memory or fear, 

A voice dreamed 
In a land that no man ever found ; 

And who knows 
What shook those lingering drops of sound 

At the rich close ? 

Ah, where were you, passion and grief 
Of the world's wrong ? 

What had you to do with a trembling leaf 
And a bird's song, 



AUGURIES 

And spaces calm with coming of night, 
And the fresh gloom 

Of shadowy trees, and smelt delight 
Of hidden bloom ? 

Yet O, in me that song had part 

Because of you ! 
It drank of the very blood of the heart 

It quivered through 
Because of the tears of joy, and the cost 

Of a joy's breath. 
Measureless thoughts of a dearness lost, 

Hope, and death. 

Strangeness of longing, beauty, pain ! 

I was aware 
Of all your secret, soft as rain. 

In the dim air. 
For Life it was that sang aloud 

To the lone dew. 
Brave in the night and sweet in the cloud ; 

My heart knew. 



MALHAM COVE 

I 

There is threat in the wind, and a murmur 

of water that swells 
Swift in the hollow : about me 

a shadow is thrown ; 
For above is no valley sequestered 

in shy, green dells, j 

But abrupt, sky-closing, a wall 

and a vastness of stone. 
Did the rock split asunder with ages ? 

or suddenly smote 
The hand of a God on the mountain ? 

for under the face 
Of the imminent height, at the humid 

and cold rock-base. 
From out of the dungeoned recesses, 

the cavernous throat, 
4 



AUGURIES 

Disimprisoned there bursts, not a rill, 
not a trickle of spray. 

But broad in its gushing and full 
and sweeping apace 

A river arisen that dances 
in laughter away. 



AUGURIES 



II 



Builded aloof ; unscaleable ; 

towering stark 
To the fugitive cloud and the blue, 

O Soul of the Rock ! 
Silent, remote as the moon, 

that wilFst not to hark 
To the cry of the lamb on the precipice 

lost from the flock ; 
If thou suffer the pine in thy cranny 

that dizzily clings 
Small-seen as a fern, or a thicket 

of obstinate thorn, 
""Tis disdain that neglects them, O rather 

a scorning of scorn, 
Unheedful of them as of those 

irresistible springs 



AUGURIES 

Gushing out from beneath thee, unheard 

as the cry of the bird 
That skims from the shadow and hovers 

a flashing of wings 
Mid the flush and the greening of April.- 

Thou standest unstirred, 



AUGURIES 



III 



A desert uplifted, a desert 

where bones rot and bleach, 
A barrenness knowing not change 

nor date nor event, 
A strength without speech, without motion, 

yet stronger than speech ; 
A bulk without feature, a winter 

of force long spent ; 
And neither is hope, nor terror, 

nor weakness there. 
But a pressure and weight of oblivion 

where no man is known. 
Nor feature from feature distinguished 

but all overthrown ; 
Like the rampart of Time that confronts us 

enormous and bare. 



8 



AUGURIES 

Immuring the dream and the vision 
whereby we have breath ; 

Like Night and the end of the light 
to them that despair : 

I stand in thy shadow and fear thee, 
thou stature of Death ! 



AUGURIES 



IV 



Come away, come away ! There is light 

in the water that ghdes. 
Come away with the water that hastes 

from the heart of the hills, 
A sinuous ripple that sings 

and that nowhere abides. 
But broken, a murmuring sparkle, 

on ledges and sills 
Of the rock, as it swerves, carries in it 

a wavering fire, 
Like a thought, like a joy, that no barrier 

stays from its flight. 
Or a dance of young children that carol 

their heart of delight ; 
For it calls to the bud to burst open, 

the blade to thrust higher ; 



10 



|J 



AUGURIES 

To my heart, to my heart, it is calling — 

" O follow ! for here 
Is thine own heart, quick and enamoured 

of love and of light ; 
O follow my swiftness and stay not 

in shadows of fear ! ''*' 



11 



AUGURIES 



On beds in the valley, on sunny 

half-islanded banks. 
Where roots are athirst and refreshed 

and saplings grow bold 
Bowing their youth to the breezes 

in quivering ranks. 
Primroses, a cluster of softness 

and fragrance, unfold ; 
And the fairy anemone, shaking 

her blossoms agleam — 
They are kisses of light as they tremble 

to touch and to part — 
Is flushed, ah ! how faint, as with fire 

from the innermost heart 
Of a world in whose veins is a laughter 

as clear as the stream ; 



12 



AUGURIES 

And the music upholds me, enchants me, 
and borne like a wave, 

I am melted, I flow, I am nought 
but a hope and a dream. 

And in me is the youth of the flowers, 
and grief in her grave. 



13 



AUGURIES 



VI 



Sudden a gust flings a shadow ! 

and shivering, the black 
Driven leaves at the roots of the oak-tree 

are whirled up and lost 
Like the wild thoughts of fear into darkness, 

and strong boughs crack, 
And a gloom rushes down with a wailing, 

and out of it tossed 
Pale snow is outshaken, and hail 

drops icily keen 
On young leaf and dead ; and awakened 

in tree-tops aloud 
Is the roar of the storm that has gathered 

the hills in a shroud 
Until naught of the towering rock 

but in glimmers is seen. 



14 



AUGURIES 

A vision unfeatured, a phantom 

of terrible birth : — 
Is it thou that appearest, a presence 

divined in the cloud. 
Thy ribs and thy knees and thy breasts, 

O Titaness Earth ? 



15 



AUGURIES 



VII 

Is it thine, the great voice that confuses 

the winds and the floods 
In a meaningless cry as of madmen, 

a blindness of wrath, 
Smiting the bosses of oak 

and the virginal buds. 
Negligent where thou hast beaten 

thy desolate swath ? 
O thou, who hast armed as for battle 

thy creatures wild 
With fierceness of claw and of fang, 

of hoof and of horn, 
From thee, even thee, from thy heart-beat 

was man, too, born 
With flesh like a flower defenceless ? 

is he thy child ? 



16 



AUGURIES 

In whose eyes are wonder and trouble, 
who strikes, yet the wrong 

He has done he turns from again 
and with sorrow is torn : 

How shall his heart be as thine 
or in thy way strong ? 



17 



AUGURIES 



VIII 

For who that is born of a woman 

has known not the hour 
When the spirit within him is daunted 

and this world comes 
As an army against him, a terror 

of aHen power. 
And fate, too vast to be borne, 

his courage benumbs ? 
Lost he seems as a child 

upon mountains alone. 
Who has longed not then with longing 

for a strength past pain 
To endure the rending of sorrow 

that makes hope vain, 
To be kneaded in iron and stubborned 

in armour of stone ? 



18 



i^ 



AUGURIES 

That hour when the heavens are shaken 

within the mind. 
And the world is an enemy armed 

have I not known ? 
For the strength of the stony mountain 

have I not pined ? 



19 



AUGURIES 



IX 



But lo ! on a sudden, with sighing 

the storm ends now 
In a radiant relenting : golden 

the light reappears 
With a glory of drops that are dancing 

on leaf and on bough ; 
And a music, a wandering music 

returns to my ears. 
From the primrose is breathing a freshness, 

and wild, shy smells 
From the moss, where the snowflake is melted 

to dazzling dew. 
And the voice of the birds on the banks 

is uplifted anew 
To the carolling voice of the river 

that onward swells. 



20 



AUGURIES 

Onward away, where the buds 

gleam white on the tree ! 

The rain and the gloom are forgotten 
in heaven'*s young blue ; 

And my heart flows otit with the river, 
the river with me. 



21 



AUGURIES 



In a trance, in a trance I listen ; 

and into my soul. 
As it draws far back to a stillness 

darkly stored 
With infinite sound, gather 

and gradual roll 
The voices of all the torrents 

on earth outpoured. 
" We tarry not, rest not, sleep not,"' 

aloud they cry, 
" We are swift as the hours that crumble 

thy strength into dust ; 
We build thee no home, nor a fortress 

wherein to trust ; 
But in us is the sound of dominion 

falling from high. 



22 



AUGURIES 

And the kings of the world dethroned 
and towers laid bare. 

We move, we are ever beyond ; 
we change, we die ; 

We laugh, we live ; to folloM^ 
wilt thou too dare ? " 



23 



AUGURIES 



XI 

How shall I not go with you, 

waters swift ? 
Too long in yesterday's self 

1 tarry, and keep 

The dust of the world about me. 

Uplift, uplift. 
Lose me, a wave in the waves 

that laugh and leap ! 
Lo, into uttermost time 

my thoughts I send : 
And because in my heart is a flowing 

no hour can bind, 
Because through the wrongs of the world 

looking forth and behind, 
I find for my thought not a close, 

for my soul not an end, 



24 



AUGURIES 

With you will I follow, nor crave 
the strength of the strong 

Nor a fortress of time to enshield me 
from storms that rend. 

This is life, this is home, to be poured 
as a stream, as a song. 



25 



ELEGY 

The little waves fall in the wintry light 

On idle sands, along the bitter shore. 

The piling clouds are all a pale suspended flight ; 

They tarry and are moved no more. 

Thin rushes tremble about the naked dune ; 
A hovering sail sinks down the utmost sea ; 
With wreckage and old foam the unending sands are 

strewn ; 
And the waves heap their dumbness over me. 

This is the Earth that lasts beyond our dreams 
Of time, and rushing onward without rest, 
Deludes us with her trancing silences, yet teems 
Fiercely, and burns within her breast. 

Insatiate of youth, this old, old Earth, 
Who uses our spent ashes for her need, 

26 



AUGURIES 

Shaping the delicate marvel of her youngest birth. 
And still she kindles a new seed, 

Intent on the unborn creature of her thought 

And busy in the waste : O even here. 

Though masked as in a calm of dumb frustration, 

naught 
Stays her, no pang nor any fear. 

But subtly, with a touch invisible, ^ 

She is changing and compelling ; and me too. 
Me too, upon the secret stream of that deep will 
She moves to a destiny ever new. 

And yet this hour my spirit hides its face, 
And, backward turned, sighs out an idle pain 
For the remembered paths these feet may not retrace 
And the hours that cannot come again. 

O hours of heavenly madness in delight 
That felt the swiftness and the throb of wings, 
That stole the burning soul of naked summer night 
And the moons of the perfumed springs ! 

27 



AUGURIES 

Not now to you my longing stretches hands. 
But to lost hours, that had no fruit, no seed. 
Like fading of low light beyond forgotten lands. 
They have passed and are dead indeed. 

And once, for once, unrecking Earth, you seem 
With me to linger and to acquiesce, 
To share the desolation of my doubt and dream. 
And to ponder upon barrenness. 

The wind lulls on the waste, and has no will. 
The foiled tides hush and falter at their bound. 
A little sand is blown, then all again is still ; 
And the clouds hang silence around. 

With such an absence felt in the lone skies, 
Suppression of such tears, profoundly sprung 
In long-remembering looks of unconversing eyes 
As when the old bury the young. 



28 



THE MIRROR 



Where is all the beauty that hath been ? 

Where the bloom ? 

Dust on boundless wind ? Grass dropt into fire ? 

Shall Earth boast at last of all her teeming womb. 

All that suffered, all that triumphed, to inspire 

Life in perfect mould and speech, the proud mind's 

lamp serene — 
Nothing ? Space be starry in tremendous choir — 
For whom ? 

In this deserted chamber, as the evening falls, 

Silent curtains move no fold ; 

Long has ebbed the floor's pale gold ; 

Shadows deepen down the silent walls. 

The air is mute as dreams beneath a sleeper's face. 

Distant, undivined ; 

29 



AUGURIES 

But every hovering shadow seems to hold 

Want untold. 

The look of things forsaken, each in its own place. 

Memories without home in any mind. 

Idle, rich neglect and perfume old — 

Over these the glimmer of the twilight fades ; 

Infinite human solitude invades 

Forms relinquished, hues resigned. 

O little mirror, round and clear, 
In solemn-coloured shadow lying 
Cold as the moon, pale as a tear. 
With spiritual silver beam replying 
Indifferently to all things as to one ; 
Beauty**s relic and oblivion. 
But void, void, void ! Desolate as a cave 
Abandoned even of the breaking wave, 
A home of youth and mirth, when all its guests are gone ! 
As I touch thee in the silence here, 
Where thou liest alone, apart. 
Through the silence of my heart 
Thou flashest elfin flames of fear. 

30 



AUGURIES 

Like a thought of lost delight. 

Like love-sweetness, like despair, 

Come faint spices of the night 

Floating on the darkened air. 

The air is tender with the sense of dew, 

Is tranced, is dim, is heavy, as if there hung 

Within the tinges of its shadowy hue 

Ghosts of lost flowers, with all their petals young, 

And the young beauty they made incense to. 

O forlorn mirror, is there nothing thine ? 

The cup is emptied of its fragrant wine. 

The dress is vacant of the breathing form, 

And thou that gleam'st 

All absence of what once moved gracious, white and 

warm 
In thy clear wells, or luminously mused, 
O little mirror long disused. 
Laid in this empty bower'^s recess, 
Thou thyself seem'st 
The soul and mystery of emptiness. 



31 



AUGURIES 

Yet if I should raise thee now. 

As once and oft, thou knowest how, 

Hand and slim wrist, smooth as a flower-stem, raised 

Thy silent brillianoe, and with intent brow 

Eyes within thee gazed 

Seeking thy oracle. 

Shall not from those pellucid secrecies appear 

Not I, nor any shape of this dim room. 

But all that in thy cave of lambent gloom 

Hath dwelt and still may dwell. 

Ambushed like visions bound in sleeping memory's cell ; 

All that thy brightness buries as the sea 

Tossed bones and crusted gold : had I the key, 

Mightst thou not ope thy depths, mightst thou not 

yield, 
Wonder of wonders ! What since time began 
Was never yet revealed. 
The unmapped, unmeasured, secret heart of man ? 

Half-shut eyes voluptuously 
Lightening, as the bosom swells and glows ; 
Smile to smile flowering from an ardent thought ; 

'32 



AUGURIES 

O what moments didst thou deify 
With the promise of life crushed to wine 
Redder than the cheek'^s triumphant rose ! 
— But from deeper places hast thou brought 
Nothing ? Are not other answers thine ? 

Hast thou not heard, hast thou not seen. 
Hast thou not shown, hast thou not found 
Shames unwhispered, terrors bound, 
Earthquake pangs of aghast surmise. 
When with itself the heart has been 
Face to face in an hour profound ? 
Out of thee what ghosts shall rise, 
Shapes and gestures, and accusing eyes ! 
World-flattered faces in midnights of pain ; 
Faces defaced by tiger-lusts insane ; 
Faces appalled before a self unguessed ; 
Ashaming dawns on faces fallen and dispossessed ! 
O what glimpses hast thou flashed in dread, 
With what hauntings wast thou visited. 
Apparitions of a soul made bare 
Shuddering at the thing it looked on there ! 

33 C 



AUGURIES 

But thou art stainless, though the heart has bled. 
Thou art silent as the air 

Or the wave that closes smooth above the drowner's 
head. 

No man hath seen his soul 
Save for a glimpse in the night 
Brief as an ember of coal 
Blown for an instant bright. 
To see his own soul as it is. 
Eternity must enter him 
With the torches of Seraphim 
That have shone to the last abyss. 
Mirror, couldst thou show the spirit this, 
Then within this narrow room 
Were the Judgment and the Doom. 
For by so much as its own self it knew 
Searched by that burning vision through and through 
To the innermost of where it crouched and hid 
Amid the husks of the mean deeds it did. 
Amid the shadow of all it shunned, the quest 
It turned from, and in palterings acquiesced, 

34 



AUGURIES 

To the uttermost of what its eager passion 
Caught of the glory springing to re-fashion 
Hope and the world, and great with pity saw 
Life darkly wrestling with the angel. Law — 
By such a measure, molten in that fire. 
Should the soul mete itself on God's desire, 
Suffer at last all wisdom, and endure 
The beam and vision of a thought all-pure. 
O were not this to taste Heaven's dawn, or dwell, 
Because of knowledge, in the pains of Hell ? 



85 



AUGURIES 



II 

Where is all the wailing, all the want 

That sorrow tore 

From Love's bleeding breast ? Extinguished quite ? 

Shall the wide- winged glory of hope extravagant. 

Shall the laughter, shall the song that sprang to 

soar 
Fall, and no ear hearken, and their failing flight 
Echoless waste walls of adamant 
Ignore ? 

Draw wide the curtain ! Fabulous, remote 

Night is come. 

Over Earth's lost bosom fragrant breathings float 

Into glimmering heights of gloom. 

But upon the solitary verge extreme 

Steals a beam. 

Hushed and sudden, ere the eye could note, 

Lo, the moon is there ! 

36 



AUGURIES 

Innocence of splendour, gazing bare, 

Drenches leaves in quiet, thought in dream. 

Is it Earth's pale mirror lifted lone 

For an answer to her million sighs ? 

Can that far Tranquillity atone 

In the gaze of those unnumbered eyes 

For the pang and for the moan. 

For the heart's dim burial and long dirge, 

Luring, as she lures the mutinous sea-surge, 

To her will of peace this human tide ? 

From a charmed shadow on the shorn hill-side 
Hand-in-hand lovers through the trees emerge. 
And pause ; their very souls are glorified. 
Their feet tread airy on immaterial ground, 
With marvelling gaze they feel 
That well of spiritual light overflow 
The listening hush, and steal 
Fear and trouble, as though 
The world were one vast music of ethereal sound 
And they a stillness in the midst of it. 
Peace, peace and pity ! pardon, pity, peace, 
Passing all mortal wit ! 

S7 



AUGURIES 

O truth long-sought and magically found, 

O wonder and release ! 

O secret of the world long-hidden in day's dust ! 

They bathe their hearts in that sweet dew, their hands 

Thrill clasping in a touch that understands 

Nothing magnificent but a divine surrender 

Absolving and august. 

To distances immersed and tender 

Unfolds this vale of struggle hard and pent, 

Region of unwon ravishment 

In unadventured lands, 

A place of leaves and lonely light and leafy scent 

Storied like that old forest of the perilous Fleece. 

Sorceress of million nights ! 
Hast thou charmed indeed the brew. 
When with stealth of perverse rites — 
Mouths that mutter, hands that strew, — 
Love tormented and malign. 
Flushed with terror like a maddening wine 
Sought another's rue ? 

Hecate of the cross-roads, hast thou hearkened 

38 



AUGURIES 

To the sailing witch'^s mew 
And the felon raven's croak 
When the shuddering winds were darkened 
And the leaves rushed from the withered oak ? 
Ah, not these foul toys would I invoke ! 
O for some supreme enchanting spell. 
Voice of a God crying aloud. 
Felt and feared on Earth's heart-strings, 
To conjure and to compel 
Like a spectre from the shroud 
Or like incense-dust that springs 
Into fire and fragrant cloud. 
Out of thy blind caves and cold recesses 
Out of that blank mirror's desert beam 
All the unnumbered longings and wild prayers, 
Infinite heart-broken tendernesses, 
Indignations and despairs 

That from man's long wound of passion stream, 
Sucked like vapour, like a mist of tears 
Into that imagined peace, that ecstasy ! 
O surely, surely, thou hast wrought thy part 
In every secret and tempestuous heart, 

39 



AUGURIES 

Thou that hast gleamed on thousand battle-crimsoned 

spears, 
Thou that wast radiant on Gethsemane ! 

She has seen not, she has heard not. 

Hearts have leapt for her, but she has stirred not. 

Pity she has made, but none has had. 

Though her magic mingles with Earth'^s want 

And the trouble of Earth's tender sons. 

Thunder of the builded Babylons, 

Music of the dreaming poefs chant, 

Venture of the steering argosies, 

With a light as of divine fulfilment clad 

Breathing in for ever syllables of peace. 

Peace, is it peace ? Yet Earth, dark Earth, 
Mother, O Mother, thou that nourishest 
In the blind patience of thy teeming breast 
Hope without end ; who drivest life to birth, 
Yet numberest not our dear and sacred dead. 
Unheeding of our anguish and lost cries 
So thou mayst build beyond us, in our stead, 
A race enriched with all for which we bled, 

40 



AUGURIES 

Of haughtier stature and of kinglier eyes ; 
Thou of whose vast desire strong realms of old, 
The d)masty of empires, were but waves 
That towered and crashed into their splendid graves. 
For thine unresting hunger to remould 
Yet mightier, O insatiable ! Doth fear 
Not shake thee. Mother, seest thou not ev'*n here 
In that cold mirror''s answer what shall steep 
Thee also in oblivion ? Thou shalt keep 
Of all the fruit of thy most fiery spring, 
Stored riches of thy sleepless trafficking, 
And proud perfection thou hast travailed for. 
Nothing ! The beauty that thy body bore 
Fresh and exulting (Mother, dost not weep ?) 
Laughter of streams, young flowers, and starry seas, 
Pillar and palace, heaven-faced images 
That man has wrought, his tossing heart to ease. 
Nothing ! To cloud shall vanish the deed done ; 
The bannered victory, the wrong borne alone, 
Nothing ! and thou be desolate and none 
To feel thy desolation : emptiness. 
Night within night, immense and issueless, 

41 



AUGURIES 

Till as a breath upon the mirror dies. 
Fades the last smoke of thy long sacrifice. 

Out of the deeps, trembling, the soul 

Cries through night to the silent pole : 

" I that am want, I that am grief, 

I that am love, I that am mirth, 

I that am fear, I that am fire, 

Though thou clothe me in beauty brief. 

Though I have worn thy sweet attire, 

I, thy endless sorrow. Earth, 

Dwell in the glory of God'^s desire. 

That kneads for ever in the flesh 

Of man, to make his spirit afresh, 

A marvel more than all thy wandering seas. 

And mightier than thy caverned mysteries. 

Nor stays nor sleeps, but world on world transfuses 

Melted ever to diviner uses. 

Through infinite swift changes burning. 

Itself the end, no end discerning, 

Till all the universe be wrought 

Into its far perfecting thought. 

42 



AUGURIES 

Then this mind of cloud and rue 
Shall in eternal mind be new. 
Mirror of God, pure and alone. 
See and be seen, know and be known." 



43 



TO TIME 



Time, Time, who choosest 
All in the end well ; 
Who severely refusest 
Fames upon trumpets blown 
Loud for a day, and alone 
Makest truth to excel : 

Shadow of God, slowly 
Gathering words, long 
Scorned, to make them holy. 
And deeds like stars bright 
That none perceived in the light, 
Lifting the weak to be strong : 

Shall I not praise thee, 
Thou just judge ? Yet O 
What so long stays thee ? 
44 



AUGURIES 

Why must thy feet halt. 
While our tears grow salt 
And our old hopes go ! 

Beauty is throned at last ; 
Truth rings falsehood'^s knell ; 
But our strength, our joy is past 
While our hearts wait thee * 
Time, Time, I hate thee, 
Hate thee, and rebel. 



45 



THE TIGER-LILY 

What wouldst thou with me ? By what spell 
My spirit allure, absorb, compel ? 
The last long beam that thou didst drink 
Is buried now on evening'^s brink. 
The garden''s leafy alleys lone. 
With shadowy stem and mossy stone, 
Intangibly seem now to dress 
Colour and odour motionless. 
A stealing darkness breathes around. 
As if it rose out of the ground. 
And tinging into it soft gold 
Ebbs, and the dewy green glooms cold, 
And dim boughs into black retire. 
But thou, seven-throated Flower of Fire, 
Sombring all the shadows near thee, 
Dost still, as if the night did fear thee. 
Glory amid the failing hues 

46 



AUGURIES 

And this invading dusk refuse, 
And breathing out thy languid spice 
My spirit to thine own entice. 

Warm wafts that linger touch my cheek. 
What is it in me thou wouldst seek ? 
Thou meltest all my thoughts away 
As leaf on leaf is mingled grey 
In shadow on shadow, past discerning. 
O cold to touch, to vision burning. 
What power is in thee so to change 
And my familiar sense estrange ? 
Thou seemest born within a mind 
That has no ken of human kind ; 
Remote from quick heart, curious brain, 
Feeling in joy, thinking in pain. 
Remote as beauty of sleeping snow 
Is from a flame's wild shredded glow ; 
Remote from mirth, anger or care. 
Or the deep wound and want of prayer, 
Yet like some word of splendid speech 
Beyond our human hearing'^s reach, 

47 



AUGURIES 

Whose meaning, could its sound be known. 
Might earth's imprisoned secret own 
That binds as with a viewless thread 
This throbbing heart of joy and dread 
With tremblings of the wayside grass 
And pillars of the mountain pass 
And circling of the stars extreme 
In boundless heights of heaven. 

I dream 
My dark heart into earth, I heap 
My spirit over with cold sleep, 
Resign my senses, one by one. 
To glooms that never saw the sun. 
Fade from this self to what behind 
Earth's myriad shapes is urging blind. 
Am emptied of man's name, become 
A blankness, as the mountain dumb. 
If so I may attain to win 
The secret thou art rooted in. 

Can life renounce not life ? Must still 
The inexorably moving will 

48 



AUGURIES 

Seek and make rankle the dulled sting 

Of essence ? Must the desert spring 

Revive, and the forgotten seed 

Be drawn again by its old need 

Through blind beginnings of a sense. 

And dark desire of difference. 

And fear, and hope that feeds on fear, 

To its own destined character ? 

I cannot lose nor abdicate 

The separateness of my state. 

Nor thou, that out of burial drawn 

Through the black earth didst shoot and dawn 

Tender and small and green, and mount 

In air, a springing, silent fount. 

Until the cold bud, sheathed so long. 

Slow swelled and burst like sudden song 

Into the sun'^s delight, and naught 

Of costliest tissue ever wrought. 

Fragrant and in rare colours dyed, 

For the white body of a bride 

Or king's anointing feast, could so 

Enrich the noon or inly glow 

49 D 



AUGURIES 

To lose the sweetly-kindled sense 
In mystery of magnificence. 

Was there no cost to make thee fair ? 
Did no far-off long pains prepare 
Those clustered curves of incense-breath ? 
Did nothing suffer unto death 
To poise thee in thy glory ? Came 
No tinge upon thy coloured flame 
From sighs ? Was there no bosom bled 
That thou mightest be perfected — 
As, serving his taskmaster'^s doom 
A brown slave patient at the loom 
Toils, weaving some fine web of gold. 
More precious than his race, to fold 
In soft attire an idle queen. 
When long his own thin hands have been 
Dust, but in all their toil arrayed 
She through her pillared palace-shade 
Glows flower-like, and her young gaze has 
No thought of any deep Alas ! 
Threaded into the sumptuous vest 

50 



AUGURIES 

That lies upon her perfumed breast ; 
Or as at crimsoned eve on high 
Some dying warrior turns his eye 
Where, lifted over spear and sword 
Among the loud victorious horde, 
A golden trophy gleams with blood 
That from his own spent body flowed. 
And trumpets sound across the sand 
To sunset in a conquered land ? 

O thou wast from life's weltering ore 
Breathed by enchanting mind before 
Man was in his own shape. Far, far 
Thou seemest as the evening star ! 
Yet mo vest me like that lone light 
Fetched through the ages of the night 
Into this breathing garden-close ; 
Or like the things that no man knows 
In a child's eyes ; or like, for one 
Watching a seaward-sinking sun, 
Beyond cold wastes of water pale 
The dim communion of a sail. 

51 



AUGURIES 

Ah ! though I know not what thou art, 
Yet in the fastness of my heart 
How shall I tell what lies unwrought 
Into the figured films of thought, 
Uncoloured yet by sharp or sweet. 
Or what forge of transforming heat 
Threatens this world of use and fact 
Wherewith the busy brain is packed ? 
Thou art of me, O Flower of Flame, 
What is not uttered, has no name. 
The springing of a want unmated, 
A joy no fallen hour has dated. 
Some of my mystery thou boldest. 
Secretly, splendidly unfoldest. 



52 



THE BOWL OF WATER 

She is eight years old. 
When she laughs, her eyes laugh ; 
Light dances in her eyes ; 
She tosses back her long hair 
And with a song replies ; 
Then on light feet she darts away 
Tripping, mischievously gay. 
But now into this room of shadow 
Coming slowly with the sun's long ray 
And all the morning on her simple hair, 
O how serious-eyed 
She steps pre-occupied 
Holding a bowl of water 
Poised in her fingers'* care, — 
Water quivering with cool gleams 
And wavering and a-roU 
Within the clear glass bowl, 
53 



AUGURIES 

That brimmed and luminous seems 

A wonder and a shining secrecy. 

As if it were the world's most precious thing. 

So open-clear that all have passed it by. 

Cut stalks of iris lie 

On the bare table, flowers and swelling buds 

Clasped in close curves Tip to the purple tips 

That shall to-morrow burst 

And shoot a splendid wing. 

When they have drawn into their veins the spring 

Which those young hands, with the drops bright on 

them. 
So all intently bring ; 
Costless felicity. 
Living and unbought ! 
But over me, O flowers 
That neither ask nor sigh, 
Comes the thought. 
How all this world is wanting and athirst ! 



54 



FERRY HINKSEY 

Beyond the ferry water 
That fast and silent flowed. 
She turned, she gazed a moment, 
Then took her onward road 

Between the winding willows 
To a city white with spires • 
It seemed a path of pilgrims 
To the home of earth's desires. 

Blue shade of golden branches 
Spread for her journeying, 
Till he that lingered lost her 
Among the leaves of Spring. 



55 



IN THE FOREST 

The beeches towering high 
Greenly cloud the sky. 
The shadows all are green 
With living sun unseen. 
O wonderful the sound 
Of green leaves all around. 
When nothing yet is heard 
Of windy branches stirred 
But wavering lights alone 
Innumerably blown 
Come trembling, and then cease 
Upon a trembling peace. 
What breathed in it ? A sigh ? 
Or something yet more shy 
Of speech ? A spirit-kiss ? 
A waft of fairy bliss 
That seeks for voice on our 
56 



AUGURIES 

Lips, there to find its flower 
In some sweet syllable ? 
O Love, I cannot tell ; 
But light brims in your eyes 
And makes divine replies. 



67 



THE FOREST PINE 

A HUNDRED autumns fallen in fire 

To dust and mould 

Have faded from their perished gold 

To throne thee higher, 

O Titan pine, that soarest straight 

From ground to sky without a mate. 

Like one desire. 

Dark is the hollow as a cup 

Of shadow immense. 

Of daylight-daunting dimness, whence 

Thou springest up 

Far into light, to take thy fill 

Of splendour, solitary in still 

Magnificence. 



58 



AUGURIES 

Leaves of the low brake hide a stir 

Of small soft things : 

Life, busy in flit of secret wings 

And slinking fur. 

Pricks buried seeds that upward thrust, 

And green through germinating dust 

Triumphant stings. 

But thou, that seemest earth to scorn 

And air to claim. 

With all thy plumy spire aflame 

And crest upborne 

In the blue air, so far, so high, 

As if the silence of the sky 

About thee came, 

Thou hidest all the sappy stream 

That in thee swells ; 

Motionless fibre nothing tells : 

And thou dost seem 

To tower in glorious ignorance 

Of earth's small stir and chafe, a trance, 

A soaring dream ! 

59 



AUGURIES 

And in a trance thou boldest me 

With bated will ; 

And I am still, as thou art still. 

My spirit free, 

My body charm-dissolved to naught 

But the vibration of a thought, 

If thought could be. 

O hush ! within the blood is felt 

An airy fear, 

A faltering ; and the heart can hear 

The silence melt 

To something frailer than a sound 

Borne from the wide horizon's bound 

To the inward ear. 

Slowly, ah ! slowly, a hush begins, 
A trembling, where 
Those branches sleep on golden air. 
And gradual wins 
A voice, a music, a long surge. 
Sweet as a song, sad as a dirge. 
Sighed out like prayer ! 
60 



AUGURIES 

The singer knows not what he sings. 

A lonely sound 

Comes trembling through him from profound 

Aerial springs. 

The songs, the sighs, the world exiled. 

Seek him and in his heart-throbs wild 

Still their wild wings. 



61 



FIDE ET LITERIS 

(written for the fourth centenary 
OF ST. Paul's school) 

When the long-clouded spirit of Europe drew 
Life from Greek springs, frost could no longer bind. 
And old truth shone like fresh dawn on the blind. 
Our Founder sowed his pregnant seed : he knew 
No crabbed rule ; rather he chose a clue 
That should emband us of our historied kind 
Comrades, and keep in us a morning mind. 
Since to the wise Learning is always New. 
In Faith and Letters he enshrined his light ; 
Faith, the divine adventure that holds on 
Through this world's forest into worlds unknown, 
And Letters, that since speech on earth began 
As one unended sentence burning write 
The hope, the triumph, and the tears of Man. 



62 



PAST AND FUTURE 

Past is the past ! But no, it is not past. 
In us, in us, it quickens, wants, ajspires ; 
And on our hearts the unknown dead have cast 
The hunger and the thirst of their desires. 

Unknown the pangs, the peace we too prepare ! 
What shakes this bosom shall reverberate 
Through ages unconceived : in that deep lair 
The unguessed, unhoped, undreaded issues wait. 

Our pregnant acts are all unprophesied. 
We dream sublime conclusions ; destine, plan. 
Build and unbuild ; yet turn no jot aside 
The something infinite that moves in Man. 

We write The End where fate has scarce begun ; 
And no man knows the thing that he has done. 



63 



THUNDER ON THE DOWNS 

Wide earth, wide heaven, and in the summer air 
Silence ! The summit of the Down is bare 
Between the dimbing crests of wood ; but those 
Great sea-winds, wont, when the wet South- West 

blows. 
To rock tall beeches and strong oaks aloud 
And strew torn leaves upon the streaming cloud, 
To-day are idle, slumbering far aloof. 
Under the solemn height and gorgeous roof 
Of cloud-built sky, all earth is indolent. 
Wandering hum of bees and thymy scent 
Of the short turf enrich pure loneliness ; 
Scarcely an airy topmost-twining tress 
Of bryony quivers where the thorn it wreathes ; 
Hot fragrance from the honeysuckle breathes. 
And sweet the rose floats on the arching briar's 
Green fountain, sprayed with delicate frail fires. 

64 



AUGURIES 

For clumps of thicket, dark beneath the blaze 

Of the high westering sun, beset the ways 

Of smooth grass narrowing where the slope runs steep 

Down to green woods, and glowing shadows keep 

A freshness round the mossy roots, and cool 

The light that sleeps as in a chequered pool 

Of golden air. O woods, I love you well, 

I love the flowers you hide, your ferny smell ; 

But here is sweeter solitude, for here 

My heart breathes heavenly space ; the sky is near 

To thought, with heights that fathomlessly glow ; 

And the eye wanders the wide land below. 

And this is England ! June's undarkened green 
Gleams on far woods ; and in the vales between 
Grey hamlets, older than the trees that shade 
Their ripening meadows, are in quiet laid, 
Themselves a part of the warm, fruitful ground. 
The little hills of England rise around ; 
The little streams that wander from them shine 
And with their names remembered names entwine 
Of old renown and honour, fields of blood 

65 ^ 



AUGURIES 

High causes fought on, stubborn hardihood 
For freedom spent, and songs, our noblest pride. 
That in the heart of England never died. 
And burning still make splendour of our tongue. 
Glories enacted, spoken, suffered, sung, 
You lie emblazoned on this land now sleeping ; 
And southward, over leagues of forest sweeping 
White on the verge glistens the famous sea. 
That English wave, on which so haughtily 
Towered her sails, and one sail homeward bore 
Past capes of silently lamenting shore 
Victory's dearest dead. O shores of home. 
Since by the vanished watch-fire shields of Rome 
Dinted this upland turf, what hearts have ached 
To see you far away, what eyes have waked 
Ere dawn to watch those cliffs of long desire 
One after one rise in their voiceless choir 
Out of the twilight over the rough blue 
Like music ! . . . 

But now heavy gleams imbrue 
The inland air : breathless the valleys hold 

66 



AUGURIES 

Their colours in a veil of sultry gold 

With mingled shadows that have ceased to crawl ; 

For far in heaven is thunder ! Over all 

A single cloud in slow magnificence 

Climbs like a mountain, gradual and immense^ 

With awful head unstirring, and moved on 

Against the zenith, towers above the sun. 

And still it thickens luminous fold on fold 

Of fatal colour, ominously scrolled 

And fleeced with fire ; above the sun it towers 

Like some vast thought quickening a world not ours 

Remote in the waste blue, as if behind 

Its rim were splendour that could smite us blind. 

So doom-piled and intense it crests heaven's height 

And mounting makes a menace of the light. 

A menace ! Yes, for when light comes, we fear. 

Light that may touch, as the pure angel-spear. 

Us to ourselves, make visible, make start 

The apparition of the very heart 

And mystery of our thoughts, awaked from under 

The mask of cheating habit, and to thunder 

67 



AUGURIES 
Bare in a moment of white fire what we 
Have feared and fled, our own reahty. 

And if a lightning now were loosed in flame 
Out of the darkness of the cloud to claim 
Thy heart, O England, how wouldst thou be known 
In that hour ? How to the quick core be shown 
And seen ? What cry should from thy very soul 
Answer the judgment of that thunder-roll ! 

I hear a voice arraign thee. " Where is now 
The exaltation that once lit thy brow ? 
Thou countest all thy ocean-sundered lands, 
Thou heapest up the labours of thy hands, 
Thou seest all thy ships upon the seas. 
But in thine own heart mean idolatries 
Usurp devotion, choke thee and annul 
Noble excess of spirit, and make dull 
Thine eyes, enfleshed with much dominion. 
Art thou so great and is the glory gone ? 
Do these bespeak thy freedom who deflower 
Time, and make barren every senseless hour, 
Who from themselves huny, like men afraid 

68 



AUGURIES 

Lest what they are be to themselves betrayed ? 

Or those who in their huddled thousands sweat 

To buy the sleep that helps them to forget ? — 

Life lies unused, life with its loveliness ! 

While the cry ravens still, ' Possess, Possess ! ' 

And there is no possession. All the lust 

Of gainful man is quieted in dust ; 

His faith, his fear, his joy, his doom he owns. 

No more : the rest is parcelled with his bones 

Save what the imagination of his heart 

Can to the labour of his hands impart. 

Making stones serve his spirit's desire, and breathe. 

But thou, what dost thou to the world bequeath, 

Who gatherest riches in a waste of mind 

Unto what end, O confidently blind. 

Forgetful of the things that grow not old 

And alone live and are not bought or sold ? '' 

Speaks that voice truth ? Is it for this that great 
And tender spirits suffered scorn and hate. 
Loved to the utmost, poured themselves, gave all 
Nor counted cost, spirits imperial ? 

69 



AUGURIES 

Where are they now, they that our memory guard 
Among the nations ? Shall I say enstarred 
And throned aloof ? No, not from heavens of thought 
Watching our muddied brief procession, not 
Judges sublime above us, without share 
In our thronged ways of struggle, hope, despair. 
But in our blood, our dreams, our deeds they stir. 
Strive on our lips for language, shame and spur 
The sluggard in us, out of darkness come 
Like summoned champions when the world is dumb ; 
Within our hearts they wait with all they gave : 
Woe to us, woe, if we become their grave ! 
It shall not be. Darken thy pall, and trail, 
Thunder of heaven, above the valleys pale ! 
Another England in my vision glows. 
And she is armed within ; at last she knows 
Herself, and what to her own soul belongs. 
Mid the world's irremediable wrongs 
She keeps her faith ; and nothing of her name 
Or of her handiwork but doth proclaim 
Her purpose. Her own soul hath made her free, 
Not circumstance ; she knows no victory 

70 



AUGURIES 

Save of the mind : in her is nothing done. 
No wrong, no shame, no glory of any one. 
But is the cause of all and each, a thing 
Felt like a fire to kindle and to sting 
The proud blood of a nation. On her brows 
Is hope ; her body doth her spirit house 
Express and eloquent, not dumb and frore ; 
And her voice echoes over sea and shore. 
And all the lands and isles that are her own 
In choric interchange and antiphon 
Answer, as fancy hears in yonder cloud 
From vale to vale repeated low and loud 
The still-suspended thunder. 

Hearts of Youth, 
High-beating, ardent, quick in hope and ruth 
And noble anger, O wherever now 
You dedicate your uncorrupted vow 
To be an energy of Light, a sword 
Of the ever-living Will, amid abhorred 
Din of the reeking street and populous den 
Where under the great stars blind lusts of men 

71 



AUGURIES 

War on each other, or escaped to hills 
Where peace the solitary evening fills. 
Or far remote on other soils of earth 
Keeping the dearness of your fathers'* hearth 
On vast plains of the West, or Austral strands 
Of the warm under- world, or storied lands 
Of the orient sun, or over ocean ways 
Stemming the wave through blue or stormy days, 
Wherever, as the circling light slopes round. 
On human lips is heard an English sound, 
O scattered, silent, hidden and unknown. 
Be lifted up, for you are not alone ! 
High-beating hearts, to your deep vows be true ! 
Live out your dreams, for England lives in you. 



72 



THE TRAM 

(in the midlands) 

I 

A GRINDING swerve, a hissing spurt. 
And then a droning through the dirt ! 
The tram glides on its wonted way 
Of everyday, of everyday. 
Past every corner still the same 
Squat houses huddle, meanly serried. 
An image of the mute and maim 
With life behind their windows buried ; 
Blank windows staring under slate 
That presses on them desolate 
As eyes bereft of brows, and drips 
On puddled, flowerless garden strips. 

Is it evening, noon or morn ? 
Is it Autumn, is it Spring ? 
Nothing tells but the forlorn 
73 



AUGURIES 

Rain that is over ever\i:hing. 
A rain that seems too slow to fall 
And drifts, an immaterial pall 
Of wetness in the air ; it leaves 
A dismal glistening on the eaves, 
And grimed upon the pavement lies. 
For the dirt is in the very skies. 

Like without, and like within ! 
Dull bodies clatter out and in. 
And the bell clangs, as they subside 
On the long seat, and on we glide, 
Defensive creatures, all askance 
At one another ! Small eyes lance 
Suspicion ; fingers tighten close 
On baskets ; thin lips will not lose 
A word too much, and skirts draw shy 
From any touch too neighbourly. 
And now a bald-head, grossly quaking 
And lurching round for elbow space. 
Sets a black-beaded bonnet shaking 
Above a pinched averted face 

74 



AUGURIES 

Or stifBy-bastioned heaving bust 
That virtuously expands distrust. 

And all the fluttered narrow looks 
Appear like little painful books 
Of soiled accounts, where bargains keep 
Their cherished tale of capture cheap. 
For life is all a cheapening, 
And the rain is over everything, 
And there is neither mirth nor woe. 
Who made it so, who made it so ? 



76 



AUGURIE'S 



II 

As I muse, as I muse. 

Numbed at heart, with eyelids leaden, 

Stupefying senses lose 

All but sounds and sights that deaden ; 

Glassy gaze and shuffled feet, 

Humid glide of the endless street. 

Passing by with rank on rank 

Of dripping roofs and windows blank. 

Till one dull motion drones the brain 

Out of meaning, out of time, 

And the blood beats to a chime 

As of bells with mouth inane. 

And now a monstrous ark it seems 
Thafs hurried with the speed of dreams 
Through streets of ages ! On it drives 
Among unnumbered years and lives. 
And now the sound grows like a surging, 
76 



AUGURIES 

As if this speed a host were urging. 
And in the sound are voices coming 
Thick, and tumultuous music drumming ; 
And savage odours are astir 
Of forest leaves and hidden fur. 
And naked limbs of hunters glide 
And warriors in the great sun ride. 
And mutinous-nostrilled horses champing 
With restless necks are strongly stamping. 
The Roman purple passes proud 
Like an eagle through a cloud. 
L05 knights-at-arms with pennons dancing 
To death's adventure gay advancing. 
And here a queen that is a bride 
Crimson-robed and lonely-eyed. 
And there a pilgrim's dusty feet 
Faring to the heavenly city ; 
And now an idle beggar singing 
How the sun and wind are sweet, 
A wayside song, a wanderer's ditty : 
And still around, out of the ground. 
The armies of the dead are springing ; 
77 



AUGURIES 

And with unearthly speed and number 

Compelled like those that walk in slumber 

They follow, follow ! And at my ear 

An imp that squats with demon leer 

Is screaming. See the Triumph go ! 

See for whom the trumpets blow ! 

The prophesied, that goes before us ! 

This is he. Time's crown and wonder 

That has the very stars for plunder ; 

This is he, the Promethean, 

(Hark the ever-rolling paean 

With a wilderness of apes for chorus !) 

Who fetched from heaven the stormy fire 

To serve and toil for his desire. 

And plumbed the globe, and spoiled old Earth 

Of all the secrets of her birth ; 

See him, throned triumphant there. 

Like a toad, with glassy stare ; 

Eyes, and sees not ; ears, and hears not ! 

Heart, and hopes not ; soul, and fears not ! 



78 



J 



AUGURIES 



III 

A boy with a bunch of primroses ! 
He sits uneasy, flushed of cheek. 
With wandering eyes and does not speak. 
His hands are hot ; the flowers are his. 

But Spring, O Spring is in the world. 
And eager fancy forward flying 
Sees little fronds almost uncurled 
Where still the dead brown bracken "'s lying, 
And a thousand thousand shining drops 
Upon the young leaves of the copse. 
The spurge has all his green cups filled — 
A gust will shake and brim them over — 
From cuckoo-flowers the rain is spilled ; 
I smell first sweetness of the clover. 
Long tendrils of the vetch are thirsting, 
White blossom on the thorn is bursting ; 
Twigs redden on the sapling oaks 
79 



AUGURIES 

Above the grass that shoots and soaks ; 

The streams flow fast by reed and rush ; 

Loose notes come fluted from the thrush ; 

In forky boughs and leafy shade 

There's busyness for every wing ; 

And sweet through stalk and root and blade 

Run juices of the wine of Spring. 

But the primrose perfume, faint and rare 

Is like a sigh of Spring forsaken. 

O shy soft beauty, torn and taken ! 

O delicate bruised tissue fair ! 

You are like the eyes of an outcast fond, 

Or a face seen at a prison-grate : 

For Beauty "'s but a vagabond 

And knows no home and has no mate. 



4 



SO 



AUGURIES 



IV 

Alas ! what dungeon walls we rear. 
For our possession, round us here ! 
We make a castle of defence 
Out of the dullness of the sense ; 
Possess our burrow like the mole ; 
And with the blundering hands of chance 
Grow cruel in our ignorance. 
What is another'^s springing soul 
That I should seek to force and bind it ? 
To catch my gain where it has tripped. 
To thrust it down when it has slipped. 
To stupefy and dumb and blind it. 
Fortress my virtue with its failing, 
And kindle courage at its quailing ? 
What is another's thought, that I 
Should wish it mine in effigy ? 
Ah ! we that grasp and bind and tame 

81 



AUGURIES 

It is ourselves, ourselves we maim ; 

We maim the world. The very Spring 

Stops all mute and will not sing. 

The sapless branches will not quicken. 

The cells of secret honey sicken. 

Giant brambles writhe and twist 

About the trees in poisonous mist. 

The spider fattens ; flies oppress. 

And the buds are blackened promises, 

Nothing stirs, but the leaf is shed, 

And all the world of wonder ""s dead ! 

O for the touch that shall awake ! 

O for the word that shall renew ! 

And all this crust of sense shall break 

And the world of wonder pierce us through ; 

The scales be fallen from a sight 

Ravished with fountains of delight. 

And the sad dullness of our scorn 

Be like remembered night at morn : 

Then we shall feel what we have made 

Of one another, and be afraid. 



82 



TOWERS OF ITALY 

Never were towers so fair, so bold, 
Passionately springing, arrogant towers ! 
Nor air so blue over roofs so old, 
Nor on ancient walls so rare a gold. 
When I found my love among the flowers. 

O mighty Spirits, never to be stilled. 
Whose glorious works concluded seem. 
Yet in whom is a glory unfulfilled, 
And still for us you build, you build, 
What have you told her out of your dream ? 

She comes from shadow of streets below, 
And surely, O Spirits, you were there, 
Pacing among the shadows ; lo. 
In her eyes is a light, on her face a glow 
As she comes through a golden air. 

83 



AUGURIES 

Do you feel, do you breathe and throb again 
In her bosom's beat and shining eyes, — 
As an old chant heavy with world-old pain 
Is lifted afresh in a splendid strain 
On young lips, up to the skies ? 

My love is fair as a voice that sings, 

In a scented garden of joyous flowers. 

Do the old walls keep their buried things ? 

Yet the air is astir as with throbbing of wings 

And heaven with the springing of the towers. 

The hills lift a loneliness around ; 

But my love has a light about her head ; 

And as if they uttered names reno^vned, 

Bells from the towers to the silences resound — 

Voices of the youth of the dead ! 



84 



VIGIL 

In the hollow of pale night upon the moor 

The silence blows a perfume : O but hark ! 

A sound is in the bosom of the dark. 

Breathed like a secret from the glimmering shore ; 

A vigil of unearthly sound, the sea 

That never slumbers and begins anew. 

And melts into our hearts amid the dew, 

Murmuring on the moor to you and me. 

Out of a silence dateless as the old earth, 
Before ear heard or ever voice could frame 
Speech, or the human dearness of a name. 
To glorify man"'s longing or his mirth. 
Ere ever any place was historied 
For hearts that sever yet their own home keep, 
That sound comes immemorial like sleep 
Fresh, with the morning in dark softness hid. 

85 



AUGURIES 

O Love, O Love, were we not there, we too, 

In far nights and wild silences ? Were we 

Not part of this old secret of the sea ? 

For O your kiss, thrilling my body through. 

Touches me from eternity, as if I 

And you were of the things before Time came 

To measure men's desire and loss and shame, 

And no use disenchants this mystery. 



86 



THE PORCH OF STARS 

As in a porch of stars we stand ; the night 

Throbs through us, O Love, with its worlds of light. 

And mingles us in glory of one breath, 

One infinite ignorance of Time and Death. 

Behold, I am dyed in thee, and thou in me ; 

We are the colours of infinity, 

We are two flames that are one flame. 

We are but Love, and have no name. 

But did we part, O Love, if we could part. 

The very blood were taken from my heart, 

Time and Death would ride the night 

Then, and ended were all light. 

The stream of stars would fall like stone 

And heaven's utmost height be darkened, 

And we be lost, like dust that 's blown. 

Like a cry, where none has hearkened. 



87 



THE PROMISE 

What wonder of what hope dost thou enfold. 
Whose eyes are all filled with futurity ? 
What shape of more than beauty dost thou mould 
With desire''s strength out of the dim to-be ? 

Thy bosom is the haunt of holy fears. 
Shadows are all about thee, whispering 
, Deep words and glorious names from the full years ; 
But like the stars in heaven thy pulses sing 

Of a voice sweeter than all tones yet heard ; 
Of a heart richer than the summer's store ; 
Of earth awakened from old bonds and spurred 
To run a new race for her conqueror. 

Thou waitest, thy thoughts glowing, like the Night ; 
And in thee buds the flower, the marvel, Light. 



88 



A MOTHER'S SONG 

Over fast-closed baby eyes 
In the garden's golden air 
Blossom-white the butterflies 
Hover, hurry, part and pair. 
Sudden shinings, flown nowhere ! 
Blue, above, the unbounded skies ! 

Little one, O downy head, 
O fingers clasping, shaped and small. 
Laid in soft nest of thy bed. 
How the trees are Titan-tall 
Over thee that sleepest, all 
Ignorant of thy hope and dread ! 

O so small, and all around 
Life so vast works wonders new. 
Yet to thee is set no bound 

89 



AUGURIES 

What thou shalt desire and do. 
Find and fashion and hold true ; 
Deeps thou hast no thought can sound 

Thou art sought by powers unknown ; 
On thy trembling heart-strings play 
Airs unheard, O little one ! 
Whisperings of far away. 
Music made of day and day — 
Lands of promise, all thine own ! 

Wide as heaven the secrecies 
Thou dost fold : ev'n now, ev'^n here, 
Thou dost touch infinities. 
While o'er thee in hope, in fear. 
My white wishes, far and near. 
Hover like the butterflies. 



90 



ONE YEAR OLD 

Is it we that are wise, is it we, 

Who have bought with a price of grief 

A wisdom seldom free 

From scorn or disbehef. 

Who find this world fulfil 

An end that is not our will. 

Who toil with the light in our eyes 

Showing us scarce begun 

The things we meant to have done, 

Is it we, is it we, that are wise ? 

Or O, is it you, is it you, 
That have yet no language of ours. 
But whose eyes are a laughter blue 
As of light slipping under the showers. 
Whose carol, sweeter than words. 
Trills clear as an April bird's, 
91 



AUGURIES 

Or a dancing brook on the hill, — 
Blithe springs of a confidence 
That bubbles, we know not whence. 
And has no knowledge of ill ? 

Lo, our desires have gone 
Like ships to a future far 
And vanished in mist alone 
By no befriending star. 
But all to you is a wonder 
Fresh as the sky, whereunder 
Life moves to pledge delight ; 
You need no hope to bear 
The day through the day's care ; 
Your joys are all in sight. 

You want not a word to tell 
What lies beyond our guess 
And springs like a sparkling well 
In a lovely speechlessness. 
And we that have shaped with art 
Language of mind and of mart, 
9£ 



AUGURIES 

We have never yet found speech 
For the heart's blood deepest stirred : 
Something is flown with a word 
Or is buried beneath our reach. 

Our speech is spun from the pain 
Of thought and heavy with years. 
And dyed with an ancient stain 
From passion and blood and tears. 
But O, I vow, when I hear 
Your wordless carol clear, 
I would cast this speech that endures 
As a sorry old patchwork coat, 
Could I but re-fill my throat 
With the liquid joy in yours. 



93 



BECAUSE THOU ART NEAREST 

Because thou art nearest 

To the mystery of the fire 

That is Earth's and the soul's 

And the body's desire, 

Whereof we were made 

As a song out of sound. 

Trembling together 

And together enwound, 

O frailer, more fading 

The hope and the lure 

That are not where thou art : — 

They fade nor endure, 

But in thee is the secret. 

The star, and the fire. 

Ever nearer and dearer, 

My joy, my desire. 



94 



t 



ii: 



SEVEN YEARS 

Seven years have flown like seven days. 
Like seven days of shining weather. 
Since we, forsaking single ways. 
Trod earth and faced the skies together. 
The old is new, the new is old. 
And who shall reckon, one or seven. 
The years that Time has never told ? 
He numbers not the days of Heaven. 



95 



SORROW 

Woe to him that has not known the woe of man, 
Who has not felt within him burning all the want 
Of desolated bosoms, since the world began ; 
Felt, as his own, the burden of the fears that daunt ; 
Who has not eaten failure's bitter bread, and been 
Among those ghosts of hope that haunt the day, unseen. 

Only when we are hurt with all the hurt untold, — 
In us the thirst, the hunger, and ours the helpless hands, 
The palsied effort vain, the darkness and the cold, — 
Then, only then, the Spirit knows and understands. 
And finds in every sigh breathed out beneath the sun 
The human heart that makes us infinitely one. 



96 



E. H. P. : IN MEMORY 

Home from the wounds of Earth and wasting Time 
The marvel of her beauty and morning prime 
She has taken glorious with the dew of youth 
Still on her thoughts, those thoughts that from her eyes 
Gleamed still or splendid, unafraid of truth ; 
All her white passion, all the secrecies 
Of wild, sweet fire that her heart guarded, all 
Her heart's young rose, ere yet one leaf could fade or 
fall! 



She that was made like a song nobly wrought 
In fine, fair mould of movement, speech and thought. 
With glory of hair about the buoyant head ; — 
In breaking voices we her beauty tell : 
But she is radiant, she is perfected. 
Where our long hopes far from our sorrows dwell, 
A song unended, but a song so sweet. 
No tongue of mortal dares its melody complete. 

97 G 



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